


Truth and lies

by pamymex3girl



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Jake Kane POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 11:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/pseuds/pamymex3girl
Summary: Lying is a sin but the truth hurts, it destroyes lives. So lie to protect the ones you love.Old fanfiction from fanfiction.net (originally posted in 2009.)





	Truth and lies

**Author's Note:**

> I'm moving some of my fanfictions from fanfiction.net to AO3. 
> 
> Originally written in 2009, though in moving it I have edited and changed some writing choices, though the story itself remains the same. (Can't even remember how I came up with this one.)

Lyin is a sin.

It’s one of the things he learned as a child. Lying is a sin, it is bad. If you lie you will be punished. So you quickly learn not to lie, for the truth comes out eventually anyway. So why bother lying? It is not until he grow up that Jake begins to understand the reasons behind the lie.

Because the truth hurts.

Lying is a sin. But sometimes, sometimes you have to lie; lie to protect those around you, to spare them pain. For you don’t want your loved ones to be in pain. So you lie, lie to protect them. The punishment is knowing you lied, knowing what is the truth and what is the lie.

It is confusing and painful but it is worth it in the end.

\--

Jake told her he Celeste he loved her.

He asked her to marry him and with it he sealed his faith. He lied to her and he made it so he would have to do so for the rest of his life. He did it to make her happy, truly he did and because he believed back then that in time the lie would become the truth. He was so sure, back then, that someday he would fall in love with her and that they will be happy.

But the image of a high school romance haunts him.

He knows it’s stupid, he knows it and he lies anyway. He lies to her and he lies to himself. But he can’t go back to the past, can’t change the things that have happened. The truth will set you free, they say, but once it is done he can’t go back. The lies are much easier to live with then the truth.

Jake told Celeste he loved her.

It is the first time he lied to her.

It will not be the last.

\--

Eventually the guilt fades away.

It was hard at first, the guilt made him want to tell Celeste the truth anyway, but eventually lying became his second nature. He has a million excuses for all the lies he told her: it will hurt her to know the truth, it will make her angry, it will destroy his family, he is protecting her.

The lies stand. The truth hides.

\--

He only tells the truth once.

He tells Celeste he thinks Veronica might be his daughter. The results are disastrous. In the end it only enforces him to believe what he has been telling himself all this time: that telling the truth will only hurt people he cares for, it will only destroy things.

But in that moment he tells it anyway, he tells it to protect his son.

Jake tells the truth only ones and he ends up destroying his son.

\--

After Lilly is killed everything is a blur.

The truth and lies mingle together until they no longer make sense. Lying is a sin. But if lying is a sin than murder is definitely worse. It was an accident, it must have been, Duncan did not mean to harm his sister. (The truth hides behind the lies.) Jake has to protect him.

So lie he does.

(This lie might hurt the most.)

He has to choose: he can’t protect them all. Tell the truth and protect Lilly; lie and protect Lilly. Lilly is dead, nothing he does can change that, but Duncan is alive and his all live is stretching out in front of him.

So lie.

\--

This lie is difficult to maintain.

Jake has spend most of his life lying but this one is the most complicated lie he’s ever told, the most painful one. ( _The truth will out. The truth will set you free. Lying is a sin.)_ He’d hoped, idly, that Keith would never think to ask those questions, so he would not have to lie.

It’s not the first lie he’s told Keith, but this one might be the worse. Keith is, after all, only doing his job, and he is doing it for him, for Duncan, for Veronica, _for Lilly._ He’s doing absolutely everything he can to find the person that murdered his daughter and he lies to him. For one second their eyes meet and Jake wants to tell him the truth, Keith wouldn’t let anything happen to Duncan, he’d find a way to fix it. But the moment fades.

He can’t destroy Duncan’s future more than he already has.

It will take two years before he realizes the truth: _this was the worst mistake of his life._

_\--_

He sacrifices Keith’s career for his son’s future.

Because Keith accuses him of murdering his daughter and he can’t see another way out. In the end he stand in front of those camera’s, proclaiming his innocence, Duncan by his side. Duncan had to be dragged there, he truly did not want to go but it had to be done. Because Keith would never stop digging and eventually he would find the truth.

And he can’t.

The truth can’t come out, Duncan has been through enough.

Duncan deserves to live a full live, that is what Lilly would have wanted. So he stands there, proclaims his innocence and watches the world explode. Truthfully Jake had not expected things to go that bad, he did not expect Keith to lose his job, but it did and there is nothing he can do to change it.

The guilt is overpowering.

But it becomes worse the first time he sees Veronica after, for then he understands what he has done, truly.

He didn’t sacrifice Keith’s career to save his son’s future.

He sacrificed Veronica’s for his sons.

This he will regret till the day he died.

\--

For the record Jake had not thought Abel Koontz would be sentenced to death.

He knew the man would be arrested and found guilty – that was the point after all – but he did not think it would go that far. Someday he would be responsible for the death of man, all to save his son. If he’d told Keith the truth this would not have happened; it was an accident and Keith would have understood that, would have protected Duncan, but for those thoughts it is now far too late.

There is no going back.

He can only go forward. Abel is dying anyway – does that make it better? Or worse? He has Duncan and so he must go on. Jake will make sure Duncan has the best future, the brightest one for that is the only thing that will make it all worth it. But as the year goes on, as Duncan walks through it like a zombie, Jake often wonders if he isn’t too late anyway.

Duncan does not look alive, he does not look like he wants a future.

He’s just going along for the ride.

\--

Jake hates Christmas.

He has not looked Veronica in the eye since the night Lilly died. He has seen her, multiple times, he’s even talked. But he’s never truly looked at her, he just couldn’t. It would only remind him of all he had done, of what he destroyed to assure his son’s future would be secured. (A future he’s not even sure is there anymore.)

She corners him at the Echoll’s Christmas party anyway.

She asks about pictures, she creams about her mother – and he is presented, in full, with all the pain he has caused. With all the pain he and Leanne caused. But this, this one thing she is blaming him for, this he has not done to her, so there is no need to lie, for once he can tell the truth. She doesn’t believe him.

He supposes that’s only fair.

After all the lies the truth is no longer believed.

\--

Every truth does not have to be told.

Some things have to be concealed, some things should never be known. The people he loves have to be protected. Jake knows lying is a sin, he knows this, but he cannot tell the truth. _He can’t._ After all these years, after all that has happened, it will do more damage than good. If lying is truly a sin than he is surely going to hell.

The truth will out eventually.

Eventually, no matter how hard you try, the cracks in the lies begin to show. And slowly, oh so slowly, the truth begins to appear. And then, suddenly, the lie is found out, everyone knows. And then, to make matters worse, Duncan tells him that this lie he has believed for years was a lie as well. All he has done for the past two years, all that he destroyed had been for nothing.

He’d destroyed Keith’s career. He’d destroyed Veronica’s life.

All for nothing.

\--

The price he pays is high.

His daughter is gone forever, gone where he can never follow her. In little less than a year his son will disappear forever. And when finally confronted the killer of his daughter will be set free. The lie he told, the lie he believed in, will destroy everything. Aaron, who’d killed his only daughter, walks away with a smile on his face. And when Keiths walks up to him – for what Jake never finds out – he cannot look him In the eye.

So he runs.

Far away from all the pain he caused.

\--

It is only then that he realizes how wrong he was.

The truth hurts, yes, but that is no reason to lie. For the truth will only hurt for a time, it will destroy but not as much as a lie.

It is the lies that will haunt him forever.


End file.
